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The Federal Reserve is considering a key milestone in its public communication about the path of interest rates.
Wall Street economists think a language change is coming that will signal monetary policy is no longer loose, meaning interest rates are no longer seen as particularly low.
This week’s meeting may be too soon; it’s more likely such a shift will come in September, when the Fed is next expected to raise interest rates.

Federal Reserve officials meeting this week are grappling with an important milestone in their effort to raise interest rates gradually without derailing the economy: When to tell the world that interest rates are no longer all that low — or more accurately, that monetary policy is no longer “loose.”

The Skarab 18 has enough storage space for all the hiking essentials you need on a day hike, but it can also excel over longer distances, thanks to its 2-liter bladder.

As anyone who’s ever been parched on a hike can attest, being miles away from the nearest source of drinkable water isn’t particularly ideal. Not only does being thirsty take away from enjoying the outdoors, but being dehydrated can dramatically sap a hiker’s energy. Thankfully, backpack companies understood this for the issue it is and began manufacturing hydration-specific packs built for a variety of uses.

By designing hydration packs with special compartments built to hold flexible water pouches, anyone has the ability to take liters of potable water with them wherever they go. Be it a five-mile day hike, a longer backpacking trek, or even a long-distance bike ride, there’s a hydration pack available to satiate anyone’s thirst.

While a company like CamelBak built its name on revolutionizing the hydration pack, large backpack makers like Osprey and Gregory helped perfect it. As more brands have a hand in creating their own takes on a now tried-and-true concept, the market seems flooded with options.

Despite the overwhelming amount of hydration packs, selecting the right pack can be simple. Before buying, it’s important to decide on three major features: What activity it’s used for, the amount of gear it needs to hold, and how much water is required. With that said, a proper hydration pack is one that won’t feel too heavy when the water reservoir is full, features the ability to carry a moderate amount of personal items, and is comfortable to wear, even over several hours.

Read on in the slides below to check out our top picks.The best hydration pack overallOsprey

Why you’ll love it: Osprey’s Skarab 18 is the last day-hiking hydration pack you’ll need, thanks to its high-quality construction, internal frame that keeps it comfortable mile after mile, and easy-to-access water reservoir.

A behemoth in the outdoor gear industry, Osprey has consistently made some of the finest backpacks on the market. From small day hikers to full-on, pack-your-life-away backpacking bags, the Osprey has developed a sterling reputation and loyal following. That’s why it’s no surprise that the Osprey Skarab 18 also happens to be our favorite hydration pack.

It’s a smaller pack that fits squarely into the realm of day hikers. The Skarab weighs just a touch over one pound, but it still offers enough storage space for hiking essentials — no matter if it’s a camera, a few bags of trail mix, or a spare change of shoes.

Even with a heavier bag, its foam frame allows for superior ventilation, keeping your back cool and mostly sweat free. Like all its packs, Osprey decked out the Skarab with plenty of straps to allow for the ultimate custom fit, regardless of who’s wearing it.

But what makes this bag truly shine is why it’s nabbed the top spot on this list. Featuring Osprey’s new Hydraulics LT 2.5-liter water pouch, unless the pack is expecting to make a multi-day trip, running out of water will take some work. Additionally, its extra-wide clip opening makes it easy to add more water or clean the reservoir after use. The pack even has a magnetic bite valve attachment that allows it to quickly attach to the Skarab’s sternum strap, allowing for easy access.

Added extras like stretch mesh pockets on the side of the pack, a scratch-free stash pocket, removable hip belts, and external bungees for more gear are Osprey staples and only add to the pack’s overall quality. Osprey’s Skarab 18 is simple when it needs to be yet versatile and technical for those who demand it.

Pros: Comfortable to wear even over several hours, extra-wide clip on water reservoir allows for easy cleaning and refills, 2.5-liter capacity is perfect for long day hikes, offers plenty of interior storage, and the ventilated foam frame helps avoid excess sweat

Why you’ll love it: Runners don’t want anything weighing them down, and CamelBak’s HydroBak weighs just five ounces — before being filled with water, of course.

As companies like Osprey or Gregory brainstormed ideas for their first hydration packs, CamelBak had already firmly established itself as the go-to brand. Today, it still makes some of the most functional and appropriate options on the market, and its HydroBak continues this trend. For runners, it doesn’t get much better.

Thanks to the new Crux reservoir, you can expect a full 20% more water with each swig which, for runners, means less time sucking on the tube and more time focusing on their stride. Additionally, the pack features easy-to-use leak-proof valves that you can flip on or off with a gentle push. This means less wasted water and no fumbling with the tube while running.

CamelBak also outfitted the Crux with a leak-proof cap and coated the tube with its anti-microbial HydroGuard technology, which is 100% BPA free and reduces the risk of bacteria growth.

CamelBak outfit the HydroBak with a mesh back panel and harness to help with ventilation, something runners of any skill level will surely appreciate. Its reflective accents also make it suitable for running early in the morning or as the sun is setting, allowing for headlights or flashlights to brightly reflect and spotlight the wearer.

Though it’s small, the HydroBak still features a few zippered pockets perfect for keeping energy gels, granola bars, and some cash for those well-earned post-run beers.

Pros: Weighs just five ounces without water, mesh back panel and harness aid in ventilation, new Crux reservoir allows 20% more water per drink, and its leak-proof valves are easy to flick on or off

Cons: Doesn’t offer much in the way of storage (not that runners need much of it, anyway)

Known primarily as a purveyor of high-quality water reservoirs, Platypus also dabbles in manufacturing full-on hydration packs and its Duthie A.M. 10.0 would be the apple of any day hiker’s eye. With plenty of internal and external storage options even for additional tools and gear, the Duthie’s 7L capacity is perfect for short jaunts into the backcountry or several mile excursions.

Its strategic approach to organization also means you won’t be digging past your car keys to get to your snacks — everything has its own place in the pack.

When it comes to the Duthie’s hydration capability, few companies deliver as well as Platypus. Featuring a large three-liter reservoir, the brand’s patented BigZip water pouch features a magnetic hose clip and also offers wearers the ability to route the house in multiple ways — a welcome function not typically seen in hydration packs.

For hardcore day hikers who also have other activities in mind, the Duthie also offers a useful carry system designed to hold pads or full-face helmets and even sports a fleece-lined pocket perfect for stashing a pair of shades.

Additionally, the pack easily conforms to a variety of body shapes and sizes with just a few adjustments of its straps and hip belt. After finding the perfect fit, Platypus’ FloatAir back panel keeps you mostly sweat-free and comfortable, no matter how long the hike.

Pros: Plenty of storage options despite its modest 7L capacity, external tool and gear loops, capable of fitting many different body types, comes standard with huge three-liter BigZip water reservoir and magnetic hose, and FloatAir back panel offers comfort for even the longest day hikes

Right now, it looks like the deals apply to EVGA and MSI models, highlighted on Nvidia’s site but fulfilled by UK retailers like Scan and Ebuyer. By our reckoning, The GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1060 are already the best value graphics cards on the market, so throwing in a free SSD makes them even more alluring for anyone building (or upgrading) a rig for 1080p PC gaming.

The GTX 1050 Ti models included in this promotion come with a 120GB Kingston A400 SSD, while the GTX 1060 comes with a 240GB Kingston A400 SSD. These aren’t the fastest SSDs on the planet, but they’re still way faster than mechanical hard drives. That can make a big difference when it comes to reducing game load times and even preventing hitches in games that heavily utilise background streaming.

What a day when our laptops and phones are slung around in our bags like a set of loose keys. The reverence we once had for our pricey electronics seems to be long gone in favor of treating them as if they were the ones responsible for our ever-growing e-mail count. (Who even remembers laptop sleeves anymore?) Maybe it’s time we start treating our three-to-seven pound commute companion with a little more care, starting with purchasing a laptop friendly bag.

It’s the modern era and most brands know we’ve evolved from needing a wallet and keys on our way to work to needing space for all of our technology, a pair of post-work gym sneakers, and a bottle of dry shampoo. While most leather, and even canvas, tote bags can do the trick, we’ve sourced out bags that go the extra mile. Some double up as a shoulder bag or backpack with padded laptop compartments and some are just perfectly-sized bags that render your hardware inconspicuous to the outside eye. Just because we’re schlepping doesn’t mean we need everyone to know just what we’re schlepping. Shop ahead for the bags that will give your laptops a little more TLC.

Slack is one of those startups that Silicon Valley loves to boast about. It has zoomed to international success, 8 million users, and a $5 billion valuation in a fast four years.
But now it is being chased by giant companies like Facebook and especially Microsoft.
Top Slack exec April Underwood says that the company has a secret weapon: Users actually enjoy using it.

Slack Chief Product Officer April Underwood — who’s been running engineering for the fast-growing startup for most of its four years on the market — isn’t terribly worried about all of the big-name rivals that are coming for it.

Senate Republicans like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski describe their 51-seat majority as “excruciating.” Apparently, having to find common ground with even one or two Democrats is just tragically exasperating.

And lose they have on several fronts. For instance, Donald Trump’s controversial Veterans Affairs nomination of White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson crumbled under the weight of multiple misconduct allegations. Ryan Bounds, a Trump pick for U.S. circuit court who demonstrated outright disdain for diversity of any kind, also failed to advance after the Senate GOP’s sole African-American member declined to back him.

In other words, the big problem for Senate Republicans is that, without a stronger majority, they can’t jam through whoever they want regardless of actual qualifications, racist/misogynistic writings, etc. But their big dream, of course, is still to strip millions of Americans of health care coverage by completing their assault on the Affordable Care Act.

“With 53 members we get health care done,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), vice chair of the party’s campaign arm.

Unfortunately for Republicans, a Senate map that once looked extremely promising given the 10 Democratic Senators defending seats in states Trump won in 2016 is now looking a lot less fecund. Instead of solidly padding their numbers to near filibuster-proof levels, they’re hoping to gain just a seat or two. And the possibility remains that they might pick up nothing or even lose their tenuous majority.

But at this point, even keeping the status quo would minimize the amount of damage Senate Republicans can do, especially if Democrats succeed in winning back the House.

“The closer we are to balance, the less likely the most outrageous nominees will go through unquestioned,“ noted Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.

Refinery29 is proud to present The Pipeline , our monthly commitment to highlighting young women who aren’t just making it in Silicon Valley — they’re thriving. This is your chance to hear the stories of the product designers, researchers, and engineers who are driving innovation and setting the stage for generations to come. These are the future faces of tech.

Andrea Ashwood is used to receiving — and usually passing on — messages from recruiters seeking mechanical engineers on LinkedIn. It is, after all, an in-demand job, especially within the tech industry, that’s expected to grow significantly in coming years. But when she got a note from a recruiter at Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, she felt more confused and intrigued than dismissive.

“I didn’t know anything about Snapchat except that it was what the kids were using, and by the kids I mean all of my little cousins,” she says. “It was more of a curiosity that brought me down to do the interview because I couldn’t figure out why on earth they would want to talk to me.”

Now, Ashwood, 36, attributes her inability to guess the purpose of her interview to bad Googling. Had she searched more vigorously, she might have quickly figured out that Snap was looking for engineers to help the company build its first rumored piece of camera-embedded hardware, Spectacles.

Ashwood has a skill that many companies in and out of tech industry find valuable: She can identify and fix problems, and she isn’t afraid to fail as she strives to do so. For her, failure is just part of the process of gaining more knowledge in the path to making something work. This is thinking she has applied to the products she has worked on, including Spectacles, as well as her own career trajectory, which has been anything but smooth and linear.

Although Ashwood has always been interested in science, she did not picture herself ending up in tech or even engineering. From first to twelfth grade, the Milwaukee native was part of Chapter 220, a program the state started in the 1970s to better integrate public schools. Kids, primarily black kids, were bussed from the inner-city to attend schools, which had a largely white population, in the suburbs. During Ashwood’s junior year of high school, a guidance counselor applied for an engineering summer program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on her behalf. Her mom told her she needed to attend or get a job. Choosing camp was an easy decision, Ashwood says.

In Ashwood’s mind, the program had a focus on diversification that echoes some of the goals of Chapter 220: “Basically [the University of Wisconsin-Madison] was trying to do what a lot of people are doing right now, which is increase the number of women and minorities in STEM fields,” she says.

There was a major perk: Those who completed the eight-week camp and were accepted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison were eligible for a scholarship. Ashwood did just that and earned the funding, but she wasn’t immediately sold on majoring in engineering. She only decided to focus on mechanical engineering during her junior year, because “it had the lowest GPA requirement, and I was pretty sure I would get in.”

She initially hated the discipline and considered switching out of the sciences to something else entirely, like business, because she felt she “wasn’t smart enough” for engineering. But an internship at Harley-Davidson, the motorcycle giant headquartered in Milwaukee, changed her mind: “Having that internship and doing really well at it made me feel like, Okay, well maybe I’m stupid but at least I can do the work.”

When she returned for her senior year of college, the encouragement from her internship continued: She took two mechanical engineering classes she enjoyed, thermodynamics and fluid dynamics. She also found a mentor in one of her professors, who urged her to apply to grad school, which she did. It usually takes someone at least four or five years to earn the advanced degree in mechanical engineering. Ashwood did it in three. She describes the process as nonchalantly as someone ordering take-out and having it quickly delivered to their doorstep: “Next thing you know, I had a PhD.”

After graduating, she followed her passion for renewable energy to a postdoc at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado. But she quickly became frustrated by the slow pace and levels of bureaucracy at the federal institution. She felt suddenly lost and unmoored, in a way many recent graduates and even mid-career professionals can relate to: “It was like going through an existential crisis of this is my dream job, I’m here, but it’s not what I expected it to be. Why on earth did I spend so much time in school if this is what I wanted, and now I have it, and it’s not actually what I want? ”

She left, and at the suggestion of her former advisor, applied for a job at Caitin, a start-up in Fremont, California, that was working to build a new kind of air conditioning technology. But two months into the job, Ashwood realized that the numbers were not adding up. “I didn’t understand how the science made sense,” she says. “That was actually my first lesson in speaking up. I had sort of been asking questions throughout the process, but I think the feeling on my end was that everyone else had been there longer and had some understanding that would come to me the more I worked on it.”

She followed her intuition, and ran an experiment testing her hypothesis that the product couldn’t deliver the magical cooling effects it promised. She turned in the data supporting her thinking on a Monday. By that Wednesday, the company had shut down. Ashwood had fixed the problem, and, in doing so, proved herself out of a job.

But her candor earned her a supporter: A venture capitalist who funded Caitin was happy to learn early on that the product wasn’t ever going to work, without needlessly pumping more money into it. He helped her land a job at an energy storage company. She went there for a couple of years before leaving to join a former coworker at Dropcam, the wireless home security camera company that was later acquired by Nest. The switch was a welcome break: “It was the first time I was at a company where we weren’t putting all of our thought and energy into figuring out how to make something work. Something already worked, and I was just trying to figure out how to make it work as efficiently as possible.”

There, she worked to determine how to effectively move heat that is generated in the process of running a device. She enjoyed the job’s cross-functional nature and the chance to work with different teams of designers, but, a little over a year in, began to grow tired of the 30 mile-plus commute from Oakland to Palo Alto. The message from the Snap recruiter hit her LinkedIn inbox at an opportune time.

During her interview at Snap, Ashwood was asked to critique the design of a wearable that had been broken down into its component parts. The questions engaged her in an exciting way, and by the time she left the interview she knew she would take the job if and when it was offered to her — even though she still didn’t have any clue what she would be working on.

Ashwood didn’t find out about Spectacles until her first day on the job in September 2015. Her background in energy made her a perfect candidate to tackle a challenge the company was facing: The corner of the glasses, where you push the button that takes a 10-second video, was getting too hot to touch. Ashwood needed to figure out how to distribute the heat, without making the glasses overly bulky: “You basically have everything that you have in a cell phone in your Spectacles, but it’s obviously a much, much smaller size to work with.”

Her eureka moment came when she figured out an effective combination and placement of what’s called thermal interface material, a “squishy, silly putty kind of thing” that is more conductive than air and lets you move heat from one component into a heat sink, which then transfers that heat. The result is a pair of shades that can be put to work, filming the sights around you, without becoming uncomfortably warm.

When it came to working on the second version of Spectacles, a sleeker pair released this April that received more positive feedback than the originals (hundreds of thousands of which reportedly went unsold), Ashwood faced a different kind of challenge. The glasses needed to be even slimmer, and transfer more data more quickly, a process that is much more power intensive. Then, there’s the fact that the glasses have water-tight sealing, something that prevents air from creeping in, making it even harder for them to cool down. But she was up for the task and, once again, executed it successfully, finding ways to keep the glasses from overheating both in and out of the water.

Although Ashwood declined to elaborate on what she is working on now that the latest version of Spectacles is out in the market, there are rumors that a third generation pair is in the works. However, with the recent news that the head of Snap’s Spectacles division, Mark Randall, has left the company, there’s no telling what’s next for the company’s hardware line.

Still, Ashwood is undeterred. At some point, she thinks she’ll end up back in renewable energy — “you see things like climate change and feel like you should be trying to help” — but says that’s not today or even next year. What she does know for sure is that every step in her career has boosted her confidence in her skill set, and helped her realize which qualities are really important to getting ahead.

“Smartness is not really the point. Are you curious? Are you hard working? Are you willing to work even in the face of not really knowing what the heck you’re working toward? I think those are the things that are much more important than smartness.”

Ashwood’s Advice For Finding The Confidence To Speak Up & Make Your Voice Heard In The Tech Industry

Find A Mentor

“The professor of my favorite class became my first professional mentor. Over the years, he pushed me to go for opportunities, like grad school and then start-up companies, which step-by-step helped me find the confidence in myself and my work.”

Acknowledge When Something Isn’t Making Sense

“Don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t understand’ and look for additional explanations or ways of thinking. Engineering, like so many fields, is really, really hard, and everyone is going to learn differently. You will learn your stuff — you might just need to approach the problem in a different way. You’ll be better off for this and it will show in your work.”

Always Look For New Opportunities To Learn

“Stay curious to stay on top of your game — at work and outside of work. You’ll learn more and approach problems differently and more creatively if you stay curious.”

“And they wonder why those of us in our twenties refuse to work an 80-hour week just so we can afford to buy their BMWs…Why we aren’t interested in the counterculture that they invented…as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes.

But the question remains: what are we going to do now?”

In the iconic opening scene of Reality Bites, Winona Ryder makes an impassioned speech about just how screwed her generation of college grads is. Things suck, and the movie makes it the task of her and her friends to resist the commercial forces waiting at the wings to profit from their work.

Reality Bites is both a time capsule and a generational touchstone, a portrayal of the defiance of certain Gen Xers resistance to professionalism. As I understood it then, selling out was some kind of crime — not the illegal kind of crime, but a crime against yourself. It would slowly but surely corrupt your work and your spirit and soul, and only when you’re spitting out disingenuous, phony work will you realize how you robbed yourself of your own talent. And if you didn’t see the problem with selling out to the man, your flannel-wearing peers would definitely keep you in check. The movie pitted trust and artistic integrity in the face of corporate interests. Sure, it sometimes meant you were broke, but you were demonstrating the most valuable trait of all: keeping it very real.

The reason these characters seem ridiculous 24 years later is because we now know that the 1990s was one of the happiest and most economically prosperous decades America has seen: Household income was going up, poverty and crime were decreasing, real estate prices hadn’t yet rocketed, and a recession wouldn’t land for another 10 years. (In 1998 and 1999, there was a federal government surplus, which means extra money, something millennials have never experienced in their adult years.)

The characters in Reality Bites, who don’t want to accept their parent’s hand-me-down BMW because of what it symbolizes or dream about selling a documentary to a giant media company, now seem like complete aliens who don’t want to one day live without roommates. They weren’t even hiding their rich parents from view, even while nobly resisting their help. Who were these privileged hipsters? Forget adulting. These people would never become adults.

The romanticism of that time and its zeitgeist has worn off in a time of extreme wealth inequality, with millennials struggling to pay for the things their parents had even while they work full time with side hustles. Living the unpaid “authentic” life were the values of a different time. And this is what most millennials have to say about it: Not in this economy.

This economy is weird, distorted, and extreme. Millions of young people who graduated in the throes of the Great Recession are saddled by debt (collectively America now owes $1.5 trillion in student debt) and stagnating wages (growing at a measly 2.5% a year at the lowest unemployment rate in a decade, it’s not catching up to inflation). This is all while fed a diet of “inspirational” stories of entrepreneurship — i.e. lucrative careers forged from “influencing” on Instagram feeds and flush unicorn startups of electric scooters to juice packs raking in millions in venture capital funds. They call us the brokest generation, and yet we’re ever so optimistic in these dark economic times that 53% of us expect we’ll become millionaires. The rising costs of education, healthcare, and rent are eating into our monthly paychecks — all making it hard for middle class millennials to achieve the kind of financial stability our predecessors expected as long as they sold out to the man. Those boring, but steadily paying 9-to-5 cubicle jobs with benefits that the Gen Xers detested are disappearing, replaced by a gig economy and permanent freelance jobs that offers freedom but irregular hours, instability, and no benefits.

These dichotomies are at the heart of some very big problems, not least of which is an eroding middle class in a booming economy where all the wealth sits at the top with some vague promise that somehow it’s going to trickle down if we just stopped taxing rich people and corporations so much. This hollowing of the middle creates a strange kind of pressure: if only you can figure out what it is you’ve got to sell so you don’t end up at the bottom, and once you do — cash in. That divide has brought with it the birth of a new ethos: Get that money. That sch’money. Get those #lifestylegoals. Monetize everything.

Millennials are all about hustling. In the meantime, the glorification of the slacker died. To be a slacker millennial is to be a loser. A non-starter. Not getting that money. Not doing you. Being unemployed isn’t glamorous if you’ve experienced it, and that was the case in 2008 for too many people.

There’s been a change on the other side too though: “The man” who Gen Xers fought against has evolved, too.

Selling out has gotten friendlier, with companies (some of which founded by 20 somethings, who the man now works for) wholeheartedly saying: We can’t wait to hire that local artist nobody has heard of to do a mural or installation. (Supporting the local art scene has become synonymous with “Don’t worry, we’re not the bad kind of gentrifiers!”). Corporations decided it was time for a new formula: Buy in early instead of asking people who’ve made it to sell out. (It’s cheaper and “more authentic.”) Show your loyalty to the artist, then ask them to show loyalty to you in return. Find the nobody that has a cult following, not the somebody who has their own brand already. Then give them equity instead of money, and if you’re lucky, you can be like David Choe and make $200 million for an early graffiti mural in Facebook’s office.

Top tier companies have been struggling to recruit millennials, confused by what they’re looking for beyond money. They need talented white collar workers, so they adapt by trying to make a more “meaningful” company and environment for millennials to work in. To show that they care about you, companies became locked in a perks arms race to take care of all your needs: they’re offering to do your laundry, help pay your student loans, give new parents a year of maternity leave, even buy insurance for your pets. Increasingly, companies are tailoring their culture to millennials, because they believe it’ll attract talent. This is what you get if you can get to the top: You don’t have to follow the man’s rules, he’s trying to play by yours so you don’t leave for his competitor. Selling out looks different, and maybe it feels different too.

It’s undeniable that paired with the acceptance of selling out is a new pride in being financially independent.

“If someone told me while I was in college that I could be making $60-80,000 goofing around in a really pretty office, having fun and coming up with great ideas — I can’t imagine saying no to that. And that’s partly because financial independence is so important to me: I don’t have a trust fund, I don’t rely on anyone, making my own money is what I think makes me me. I think that’s more common in women of our generation,” said Sally Franson, the author of A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out, a novel about the perils and perks of that.

The undercurrent of financial responsibility is both pragmatic and a value millennials celebrate. We don’t want to rely on our parents or stay on the family cell phone plan and use our brother-in-law’s Netflix password forever. It’s precisely because we’ve seen such little fruit from our labor that the desire for a better safety net has emerged in calls for student loan forgiveness and universal basic income.

While we wait for these new policies, we have taken it upon ourselves to do anything necessary so we don’t wind up poor and with no savings, and maybe go on vacation without amassing credit card debt; or buy a house and have a family. On social media, we readily celebrate those who climb out of 6 figures of debt or manage to scrap together a down payment through sheer grit and extreme saving. The rapper Dee-1 celebrated the advance for his record deal by first paying off his student loans, then recording a song that could only exist post-recession: “I finish paying Sallie Mae back! Mae back!” he repeats in the chorus, as Dee pumps his fists into the air with a look of absolute joy.

The one problem here is perhaps a lack of awareness that there’s a problem in always playing to market forces: Growing up with shows like American Idol, millennials have been taught from a young age what it means to conform to mass appeal. As Douglas Rushkoff found in his documentary, Generation Like, many of the millennials he interviewed had no concept of what selling out even was. And herein lies the debate for Gen Z: How can you sell out if you don’t know what it is or why it’s bad?

For Gen Z and older millennials pondering why selling out is now acceptable (or even, cool), the answers are everywhere. It’s not just the economy we live in, it’s the fact that the man sometimes works for millennials now (hello, all you tech unicorn founders).

The critics of selling out have largely disappeared, maybe because no one dares to criticize a generation so sold out by the economy and capitalism. But a lot of other things have changed too: It’s hard to stay underground in the internet age. Our everyday lives are becoming increasingly commercialized, our attention and private data sold for ad dollars. Our favorite coffee brands eventually become part of some other giant coffee brand. Some have even argued: Selling out might have saved the things we love.

The thing is, selling out has no guarantees. It should mean a prosperous life where you don’t have to change jobs every few years to get a decent raise, and don’t have to worry about ageism and being out of a job because you’ve hit middle age, and it sure doesn’t mean the financial security selling out should promise. But when selling out doesn’t seem like a choice, why not think of it as cool? Is that delusional? Maybe. When you think about what selling out gets you, there’s a reason you’re getting the money: It’s a job.